In addition, the Express version allows you create a “Master” page so that your website can have a consistent look and feel. These pages serve as a template and then your subsequent pages pull all the content from this page and allow you to place small areas of text in each of your other pages.  This gives you an easy-to-use and uniform template to ensure all of your pages are easy to manipulate and are consistent. However, if you want your pages to look or behave differently then you should not create or use a “Master” page.

If you are new to web development, ASP.NET can be a great resource.  The average website requires very little cutting edge technology that’s available with ASP.NET. However, it’s available to you if you decide to implement it in the future.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition is a great tool that’s easy to use.  The only thing that may be difficult is understanding the “Master” page template feature.  Again, this feature creates a vanilla website for you to use, which provides for a simple and clean way to build and design your website.

Remember, the Express Edition is not the complete Visual Studio product, but is a tool designed for students and hobbyists. Hard-core hobbyists and enterprise developers should get the complete edition of Visual Studio, which is not free.

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ASP.NET’s strength lies in object-oriented features, and its flexibility. Because of the CLR, you can have C# programmers and VB.NET programmers working on the same project, or switch languages half way through and not have to rewrite all of your old classes. The .NET class library is organized into inheritable classes based around particular tasks, such as working with XML or image manipulation, so a lot of the common tasks have been already handled for you.

Visual Studio .NET is a huge development IDE that will allow you to deliver code at a faster rate with a lot few defects. It has built in debugging along with IntelliSense, which allows for auto-completion of methods and variables so you do not have to memorize everything. On the down side, ASP.NET uses more resources on the web server so you will require either better server or more servers in the farm.

PHP works in combination with HTML to display dynamic elements on the page. PHP only parses code within its delimiters. Anything outside its delimiters is sent directly to the output and not parsed by PHP. PHP strength lies mostly in LAMP. The LAMP architecture has become popular in web development as a way of deploying inexpensive, reliable, scalable, secure web applications. PHP is commonly used alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL. PHP can be used with a large number of relational database management systems, runs on all of the most popular web servers and is available for many different operating systems. This flexibility means that PHP has a wide installation base across the Internet.

With the arrival of PHP5, you get exception handling and true Object Oriented Programming. However, it still does not support “namespacing” to prevent class name collisions. PHP’s type checking is very loose, which could potentially cause problems if not handling correctly in the code. Another drawback is that variables in PHP are not really considered to have a type.

Finally, PHP is cheap, secure, fast, and reliable, while ASP.NET has quicker development time and is easier to implement because of its class library system. Also, ASP.NET is easier to maintain and includes many cool built-in features. Both web technologies have their advantages and disadvantages. You must decide what is best for you or your organization and budget.

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The main advantage of using n-Tier is that the complexity associated with the business and the process is reduced and is easy to implement. The elements of performance, scalability and future development issues need to be considered when deciding on the architecture of the application.

The n-Tier application has three tiers or layers; they are called the presentation layer, the business layer and the data layer. Each layer interacts with the layer directly below, and has specific function to perform. The presentation layer is responsible for displaying the user interface to the end user. The programmer uses this layer for designing the user interface and to transfer data. In ASP.NET, ASPX pages, user controls, server controls and sometimes security related classes and objects are used to support the presentation layer.

The business layer works as a go-between to transfer the data from presentation layer. In the three-tier architecture, the data access layer does not interact directly with the presentation layer. The architecture in ASP.NET includes using SqlClient or OleDb objects to retrieve, update and delete data from SQL Server or other databases and passing the data retrieved to the presentation layer in a DataReader or DataSet object, or a custom collection object. The data layer gets the data from the business layer and sends it to the database or vice versa.

In an ASP.NET n-Tiered architecture, web pages do not make direct calls to the database. A given layer only communicates with its adjacent layers. ASP.NET Web pages should reference custom objects defined in the business object layer. These objects provide database information in a class structure.

Implementing ASP.NET applications using the n-Tier architecture supports a uniform, building block approach to application designs. Hardware and software for presentation, application and database functions can be scaled separately, and included more easily when dealing with complex business environments.

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There are four reasons why ASP.NET is superior to classic ASP. These four reasons include: Compilation, Stability, Scalability and Language support. These areas make this web application framework a better choice for most web developers.

#1 – Compilation

ASP Classic is comprised of VBScript or Jscript interpreted at run-time which means each page has a specific performance hit due to line by line interpretation. The interpretation of the pages simply results in some inefficiency. ASP.NET compiles the code the first time it is accessed. The compiled code results in .NET classes housed within assemblies and allow subsequent page requests to be serviced with previously compiled code. Therefore, ASP.NET provides a more secure and largely efficient rendering model by incorporating compilation and specifically the reuse of the compiled code. This means a better experience for the end user.

#2 -  Stability

ASP is running under the inetinfo.exe (IIS) process space, making it susceptible to application crashes. This happens because the IIS needs to be stopped or restarted on a regular basis. The ASP.Net process is separate from inetinfo.exe, meaning that it is not susceptible to these types of application crashes. This means that the final product will be much more stable.

#3 -  Scalability

With classic ASP applications, components used by pages are fairly difficult to update, maintain or replace. In general updating a component in a running application will require the shutting down of IIS, replacement of the component and finally a restart of IIS. ASP.NET was built to provide specific enhancements that allow scalable and efficient application updating. The ‘xcopy’ deployment model of .NET allows replacement of pages and components in real-time and does not require a restart of the web server. If an update needs to be made to a current production application, developers can simply make the change and the infrastructure can account for that change the next time a request is made to the altered page or component. This means that content updates, fixes and enhancements to ASP.NET applications can be made in real-time with no impact to the end-user.

#4 – Language Support

ASP.NET supports full server side programming languages and not just scripting languages. Only VBScript and Javascript are available for scripting in ASP Classic where as, in ASP.NET there are no such restrictions. With ASP.NET several programming languages like C# and VB.NET are available to program in accordance to the developers preference where both of them can even be used in the same application. The benefits of using server side programming languages can be seen in the previously mentioned compilation of code.

In conclusion, ASP.NET gives web developers much more flexibility by allowing them to build robust applications for their end-user.

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To ensure the smoothness of daily website activity, it is important to assure the level of reliability of the web hosting provider along with the quality of hosting uptime that they can provide. It is recommended to seek a web host provider that can support email and live chat to their clients. Other important factors include a hosting plan that will best suit your needs for your website. Nowadays, some of the common ASP.NET webs hosting plans include file hosting services, image hosting services, blog application, video and audio streaming, shopping cart software and many more. It is advisable that you write down all of your requirements for your web application before you decide on purchasing an ASP.NET hosting plan to support your site.

Some webmasters and users who are looking for an income alternative will choose to become an ASP.NET hosting reseller. By purchasing a reseller plan, they can offer hosting services to their clients, friends or relatives. It is indeed a neat idea to start a web hosting business without high start up costs and commitment because the hosting company will provide the facilities and services, not you. If you are a reseller, all you have to care about is how to market your web hosting services and provide pre-sales support.

When choosing an ASP.NET web hosting provider, look for a company that offers the latest hosting technology. In regards to a hosting plan, go with a provider that can offer a high quality service at a reasonable price based on your needs and budget. A good provider will offer a complete hosting package that provides database server software, scripting software, web content management system, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, host unlimited websites, 99.9% uptime, and reliable customer support to resolve any issues you may encounter.

In conclusion, this is just a general guideline to help you to choose a good ASP.NET hosting provider for the best possible experience. There are no guarantees that you will be 100% satisfied with the provider you pick.

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In ASP.NET, major weight is on n-tier architecture in the application development and there is separation of data presentation, business logic and data access layers. In classic ASP, these layers are mixed leading to the development of ineffective solutions with a huge architecture that are difficult to sustain.

The .NET compliant languages can be used with ASP.NET like C# and VB.NET, where both of them are server-sided languages. With ASP, only VBScript and Javascript are available as options to be used. In addition, ASP pages are interpreted and the ASP.net code is compiled .Traditional ASP can run only on Microsoft platforms but ASP.NET can be executed on non- Microsoft platforms.

In classic ASP, the executable code cannot be separated from the HTML. This makes the page difficult to read and maintain. The code block has to be placed when ever the output is to be displayed. The use of ASP.NET pages gives a performance and security edge and supports the usage of any .Net language.

Article posted courtesy of cSharp4Newbies.com.